Last year, Jack Sweeney, the 19-year-old behind the Twitter bot @ElonJet, which tracks the Tesla CEO’s private jet’s locations, told Protocol that he got an early morning DM requesting, “Can you take this down?” It is a security risk.”
Sweeney set up 15 profiles using bots to track the flights of well-known persons such as Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, but Elon Musk’s tracker, which began in June 2020 during the lockout, has the most followers, with over 250,000. Sweeney eventually rejected Musk’s $5,000 offer to erase the account after a lengthy dialogue, and made him a counteroffer. “Any chance to up that to $50k? It would be great support in college and would possibly allow me to get a car maybe even a Model 3,” he said.
Elon indicated he’d consider it, but Sweeney never heard back from the Tesla creator.
In an interview with Insider, Sweeney explained why $5,000 wasn’t going to do it for him. “I’ve done a lot of work on this and 5k is not enough,” he said, adding that the offer wasn’t enough to supplant “the fun I have in this, working on it.” Sweeney admitted he only chose to go public with their interaction after Musk essentially ghosted him, saying, “He went the opposite way of me, so why wouldn’t I go the opposite way of him?”
Musk has since tried to work around Sweeney’s bots through a blocking system, but the teenager seems up to the challenge.